Who knows better than one who served on the inside and had the responsibilities that lead to creating profits. This is someone we need to pay attention too as he offers a glimpse inside the world of corporate healthcare that we normally do not get to see. He can share the mathematical processes and how this is calculated from the beginning up, something we all need to pay attention to instead of the next OMG stories as this is where the action takes place.

I think Mr. Potter might in some way agree with something I wrote over a year ago suggesting a Department of Algorithms as digital laws are needed today as the old format of words and more words is becoming dated and almost impossible to police.

You can read all the stories of unfairness in this business and how people are denied care due to profitability and yes there needs to be work done here but decisions made coldly on an algorithm presented on a screen when someone’s life it at hand is cold and unethical, there’s tons of this in the news, but as a society we need to acknowledge and grasp where this reality comes from and understand the folks with the data and the accelerated intelligence for profit drive this.

No drama queens or kings are going to make any difference from consumers all the way up to Congress as they can’t govern and create laws for a process they do not understand or acknowledge. It is what it is. Unfortunately today though as it is just how we are geared, the OMG stories seem to take precedence at times in keeping us fully distracted from dealing with what is really going on behind the scenes. The folks with the data and intelligence have all the money, can’t you see this? That part is not brain surgery.

Mr Potter has been featured on many shows such as Dateline to explain, but again we need to pay more attention to the processes here and get with it and drop the OMG stories that keep us distracted with not getting to the core of the problems.

So in summary, this one book I will find time to read as with today’s busy schedule my reading time is so limited with books, but I get a ton of reading material from the web so no lack of information in that respect! With the information and facts he has provided could I almost be hearing the potential of Oliver Stone perhaps knocking on his door soon! BD

I’m about halfway through the book, which I got as an advance reading copy. Those looking for news can safely skip the parts of the book that recount the history of the public relations industry and recap the health reform debate. Mixed in with those topics Potter gets more personal, describing his life as a journalist, then a PR man in the health care industry, and later as a whistle blower.

*A week in the life of a corporate PR exec: Monday meetings with lobbyists and executives. Daily compilations of all news coverage. Writing speeches, annual reports, investor communications. And: “I decided who was worthy of interviewing our CEO…I never let in a reporter I didn’t know…I always sat in on the interviews so I could cut them short.”

*Potter argues that the movement toward “consumer-driven healthcare” in which patients pay a bigger share of the expenses in order to give them an incentive not to over utilize care, is really just a way for the insurers to make money by deterring people from getting care they need. He describes how internally at Cigna nobody really understood why customers would want to shift to these kinds of plans unless they were young and healthy.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.